A long way from number 10

I'm sure some people will discount these poll findings because they were for the BBC:

Only 12% of the public believe Michael Howard will be elected prime minister, with 78% believing he will never lead the country, according to a BBC Newsnight/ICM poll.

Even among Conservative supporters polled, the majority (65%) believe he will never be PM.

And just to put on my partisan Liberal Democrat hat for a moment, can you see my smile as I read this paragraph:

Nearly a quarter (22%) of those polled believed the Conservatives were the most effective opposition party, compared with 42% believing the Liberal Democrats were.

And who's the opportunist in the eyes of the public?

On the war in Iraq, more than half of the sample (52%) believed Mr Howard's criticism of the way the government made its case for war was motivated by a desire to score political points over Tony Blair.

And 34% of those polled believe Mr Howard genuinely objects to how Tony Blair made the case for war.

Even amongst the Tory voters questioned, 38% believe Michael Howard was motivated by political point scoring.

Elsewhere, Anthony has some interesting thoughts on the Tories' problem of persuading people about their policies:

Finally there is the air of being "out of it" - in other words, people don't support us because we don't seem to have much support. Now there is a vicious circle and there isn't an easy answer to that, other than keep working, keep believing and, as Nicholas Soames said last week, Keep Buggering On.

As a member of a party that's been told 'if we thought you could win, we'd vote for you' by enough people to mean we would win since the early 80s, my advice is this: there's a lot of buggering on for you to do, I'm afraid.